302 MAN AND THE WORLD. 



ally defective. Ethical systems, therefore, which 

 inculcate such a neglect of the material are funda- 

 mentally false : for just because the physical duties 

 are the lower, they take precedence over the higher: 

 the physical necessities of life (to ^^i/) precede both 

 in Time and in urgency the moral necessities of 

 living we// {to eu ^ijv). 



On the other hand, the true meaning and function 

 of the lower activities is to be sought in their rela- 

 tion to the higher, which they prepare and promote. 

 The natural shows its spiritual nature by supplying 

 the machinery of spiritual progress and by promot- 

 ing it in spite of the unavailing protests of spiritual 

 beings. For though human stupidity has hitherto 

 resisted rather than assisted the steady pressure of 

 " natural " causes, we may trace, even within the 

 narrow limits of human history, an irresistible secu- 

 lar progress, which has strengthened the intellectual 

 and moral elements in human nature at the expense 

 of the purely animal. And even if we do not always 

 approve of the methods employed, who are we that 

 we should pit our insight against that of the power 

 that works in Evolution ? 



Thus this view enables us fully to appreciate the 

 social value of a materialism which calls attention 

 to the importance of our foundations ; and while it 

 is no less powerful in dispelling the Utopias of our 

 fancies, dissipating our castles in the air and com- 

 pelling us to uprear the structure of the higher life, 

 stone by stone, by unremitting labour, it yet solaces 

 us with loftier prospects based on the surer found- 

 ation of scientific retrospect. 



§ 31. And yet there is an element of truth even 

 in the ascetic view of Matter. We might indeed 

 have gathered this from the frequency and per- 



